Despite previous payroll cuts, Wall Street banks are ready to tighten their belts once again. Lower trading volumes have Goldman Sachs pondering more pink slips and Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman (above) may signal another round of cuts as early as Thursday. (AP)

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are plotting to hand out pink slips to staffers in the coming weeks and months as head winds from Europe’s fiscal unrest buffets the markets, The Post has learned.

Morgan Stanley is planning to eliminate about 100 trading jobs internationally in the next several weeks — with an unknown number of the cuts coming from New York.

At Goldman, executives are likely to let the hatchet fall if the slowdown in trading doesn’t reverse itself, bank officials have said.

In the first quarter, roughly 8.9 billion shares were traded on the Dow Jones industrial average, compared with 10.8 billion a year earlier, and 13.1 billion in 2010 and 24 billion in 2009.

“It’s hard to find the bottom when quarter-over-quarter vol umes keep decreasing, and uncertainty in the market continues to grow,” said Michael Karp, managing partner at recruiting firm, The Options Group.

Goldman is already cutting selectively among its middle-management ranks but could cut even deeper, sources explained.

Goldman CFO David Viniar has told people that the firm may have to undergo a “right-sizing” again if the markets’ rocky road doesn’t improve, according to sources.

It’s unclear how many heads would roll as the result of such head-count adjustments.

Such reductions would come after Goldman already cut about 8.5 percent of its staff from 35,400 in the first quarter of 2011 to 32,400 in the first quarter this year.

A Goldman Sachs spokesman declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman at Morgan Stanley.

And it’s not just Goldman and Morgan.

Industry sources said that a number of other firms, including Citigroup and Barclays Capital, may also look to trim staff.

Market forecasters estimate that Wall Street could see job cuts over the next quarter of between 10 percent and 15 percent.

That could put an additional 5,000 or so financial sector jobs at risk.

Banks’ plans to wield the ax come after most of Wall Street experienced one of its most severe series of jobs cuts in the past several years.

Europe’s financial crisis is washing up on US shores, but financial firms are also being dogged by new regulations and the specter of ratings cuts from Moody’s Investors Services, which is set to announce downgrades of investment banks in about two weeks, sources say.

Lower ratings could make it even more expensive for some firms to operate.

That fact, coupled with worries about how severe new regulations will be written under Dodd-Frank rules, is creating a recipe for a terrible summer on Wall Street.